Biden, Trudeau must expand binational action to bolster cybersecurity

Sur le même sujet

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  12 mars 2019 | Local, Aérospatial

  Simulating the ‘SuperScooper’

  by Lisa Gordon The Viking CL-415 “SuperScooper” is more akin to a pick-up truck than a sports car. It's a hardworking, amphibious turboprop that was built to fight wildfires. It flies low, battling blistering heat and blinding smoke, before releasing 13,500 pounds of water in six seconds – and then returning to a nearby lake where it skims the surface to reload. Introduced in 1993 by Bombardier, the CL-415 was essentially a turboprop version of its predecessor, the piston-powered CL-215. Today, there are close to 170 CL-215/415 aircraft in operation, mostly in Europe and North America. They are now supported by Viking Air, which acquired the program from Bombardier in 2016. Pilot training in the CL-415 has historically been done in the aircraft, but TRU Simulation + Training says that due to the unique mission it performs, those training flights can be dangerous. The South Carolina-headquartered company is a division of industry giant Textron Inc., and was formed following the amalgamation of several specialty flight simulation and pilot training companies, including former Montreal-based Mechtronix. About two years ago, TRU's commercial aviation division in Montreal began designing the world's first CL-415 full flight simulator (FFS) with the capability to replicate operations not only in the air, but also on the water. The company was able to draw on its recent experience of successfully building a Series 400 Twin Otter FFS for Canada's Pacific Sky Aviation in Calgary, Alta. – the world's first seaplane simulator with water-handling capabilities. “Before the Twin Otter project, hydrodynamic modelling is something we hadn't done before,” acknowledged Thom Allen, TRU's vice-president of Technology and Innovation. “It's like a boat simulator because you're modelling the buoyancy of the floats or the fuselage in the water. Interestingly, our engineers working on the Twin Otter program actually went to the library and researched how boats work on the water. Mixing the boat sim with the aerodynamic sim is the whole package.” He said the CL-415 experience took things one step further by adding the mission component – scooping the water – to the Twin Otter build. “From a safety point of view, the types of missions you do in a waterbomber are quite a bit different from a commercial aircraft. When you're scooping water and dropping it over a fire, training in those conditions is very dangerous. The tradeoff has always been between the quality of the training and the danger of doing that sort of training.” TRU's CL-415 FFS was delivered to Ansett Aviation Training in Milan, Italy, in September 2018 and certified by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in December to Level D standards. Although training courses have yet to be completed in the simulator, the hope is that both initial and recurrent pilot training will be done exclusively in the device. Allen said the operational characteristics of a CL-415 are complex and unique. “When you're flying over a very hot fire, you drop your water and the mass of the aircraft is cut in half. The turbulence effect is quite significant when you hit the updraft. The fire is creating turbulence, smoke, reduced visibility – and pilots are dropping every five or 10 minutes repeatedly, usually in rugged terrain at low altitudes. This is the part that made this project something new.” To gather accurate performance data, TRU rented a CL-415 and equipped it with flight test instrumentation. “We weren't doing fire drops with our engineers on board, but we did all the manoeuvres around that, and we brought in a number of senior CL-415 pilots to evaluate our work.” The result is the world's first high fidelity CL-415 simulator with the capability of replicating not just air and water operations, but various types and intensities of forest fires and changes in related environmental conditions. The cockpit noise level is accurately reproduced by a secondary audio system that – like the real aircraft – requires crewmembers to wear a noise-cancelling headset. Full article: https://www.skiesmag.com/news/simulating-the-superscooper

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  24 juillet 2018 | Local, Naval

  Bids to be submitted today for Canadian Surface Combatant – the countdown begins

  DAVID PUGLIESE The final bids are being submitted Friday by various consortiums for the Canadian Surface Combatant program. The bids going in Friday involve the finalized portions of the bids on designs (the technical design bids were originally submitted in November but today marks the deadline for responses that deal with any questions the federal government may have had/changes needed to be made) as well as proposals for the financial elements for the project. The new ships will be the backbone of the future Royal Canadian Navy. The groups bidding include: -Lockheed Martin Canada, who will be the prime on the team that includes BAE Systems, CAE, L3 Technologies, MDA, and Ultra Electronics. The team is offering the BAE Type 26 warship for the Canadian program. The proposal will include Lockheed Martin Canada's combat management system, CMS 330, which is currently on board the modernized Halifax-class frigates. A scaled down version of the system will be used on the Royal Canadian Navy's new Arctic Offshore Patrol Ship fleet. The United Kingdom is acquiring 8 of the Type 26 ships. Australia has also identified the Type 26 as the design for its future warship. Gary Fudge, Vice President and General Manager, Lockheed Martin Canada Rotary and Mission Systems told Defence Watch that the group's bid was submitted earlier this week. He noted that the Type 26 would be excellent in an anti-submarine warfare role as it is designed to be extremely quiet. The vessel also has room to future modernization, unlike older designs, he added. The Lockheed Martin team, which is making $17 billion in value proposition commitments to Canada, will commit to spending billions in innovation across Canada's priority areas, including $2 billion in supplier development and $2 billion in research and development, and $200 million in advanced manufacturing, the company noted. -Alion Science and Technology, along with its subsidiary Alion Canada, submitted their proposal based on the Dutch De Zeven Provinciën Air Defence and Command (LCF) frigate. “Our solution delivers an effective, affordable, production-ready 21st century naval capability to meet Canada's defence needs,” Bruce Samuelsen, Chief Operating Officer for Alion, said last year while promoting the firm's bid. The De Zeven Provinciën-class frigate is a proven NATO vessel, built by Damen Schelde Naval Shipbuilding, with more than 10 years of operational excellence, the company added. Alion's combat system solution is based on the world-class capabilities of ATLAS-Elektronik and Hensoldt Sensors. ATLAS brings an open architecture Combat Management System that readily accepts new and evolving technologies, the firm noted. Hensoldt's capability and experience in developing and fielding state-of-the art radars was central to meeting the unique Canadian requirements with a fielded, non-developmental radar, the Alion team added in an earlier news release. Other key suppliers include L3 Technologies Canada, Raytheon Canada Limited, DRS Technologies Canada Limited (DRS TCL) and Rheinmetall Canada Inc. -Navantia of Spain is leading a team that includes Saab Australia and CEA Technologies. Its proposal is based on the F-105 frigate design, a ship in service with the Spanish navy. The design has also already been exported to Norway and Australia. Saab, which would provide the combat management system, has support on the CSC program from Lockheed Martin (Moorestown, New Jersey), General Dynamic Mission Systems – Canada, DRS Technologies Limited Canada, OSI Maritime Service and Rheinmetall Canada, according to Navantia. The F-105 Anti-Submarine Warfare ship will incorporate Saab's 9LV Combat Management Systems, elements of which are in service on over 240 platforms in 16 navies across the globe, including Canada's own Halifax-class frigates, the company has said. The budget for the Canadian Surface Combatant project is estimated by the federal government to be between $55 billion and $60 billion. That is a range but specific costs won't be known until contacts are signed and more details worked out. Fifteen warships will be built. Pat Finn, assistant deputy minister for materiel at the Department of National Defence, told Defence Watch he expects a winning bid to be selected by the end of this year. After that negotiations would start and a contract is expected to be signed sometime early 2019. If an agreement can't be reached then negotiations would begin with the group that came second in the competition. About half of the cost of the surface combatant price-tag is for systems and equipment that will go on the 15 ships, according to federal documents obtained by Postmedia through the Access the Information law. “Approximately one-half of the CSC build cost is comprised of labour in the (Irving's) Halifax yard and materials,” the documents added. Jean-Denis Fréchette, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, estimated the CSC program would cost $61.82 billion. He also warned that every year the awarding of the contract is delayed beyond 2018, taxpayers will spend an extra $3 billion because of inflation. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/bids-to-be-submitted-today-for-canadian-surface-combatant-the-countdown-begins

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  18 février 2024 | Local, Terrestre

  Les contrats militaires continueront de plomber CAE, met en garde son patron

  Les actionnaires de CAE devront patienter encore quelques trimestres avant que ses anciens contrats militaires à prix fixe cessent de gruger ses marges. Les investisseurs ont mal accueilli la nouvelle, alors que l’action a perdu près de 10 %.